Apple Has Some Puzzling Thoughts on Silicon Valley's Diversity Problem

For all the plaudits that they earn for creating cool products and revolutionizing communication and changing the world and whatnot, America's tech companies—and this is a technical term—really, really suck at hiring workforces that approximate the diversity of the nation of millions and the world of billions that they purport to serve. As part of its attempts to address these shortcomings, Apple recently hired Denise Young Smith as its first Vice President and Diversity. Young Smith, an African-American woman with two decades of service at the company, recently shared some thoughts about the future of Apple's efforts to recruit and retain women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups in Silicon Valley.

The views presented are truly puzzling. From Quartz:

When asked whether she would be focusing on any group of people, such as black women, in her efforts to create a more inclusive and diverse Apple, Young Smith says, “I focus on everyone.” She added: “Diversity is the human experience. I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.” Her answer was met with a round of applause at the session.

With all due respect to Young Smith: Diversity is not the "human experience." There are a constellation of characteristics and experiences and traits that make every person different from every other person on the planet. The problem is that out of all those myriad attributes, the ones that seem to play a very significant role in whether or not a person gets hired and/or ascends to a leadership position in a tech company are gender, and race, and ethnicity. It is not a coincidence that the same demographic groups affected by deep-rooted, centuries-old traditions of mistreatment are the ones that find it challenging to break into this industry. (Apple says 32 percent of its employees are women; Recode puts the proportion of women in tech positions at 23 percent.) Responding to this institutional failure by stating that the "human experience" is diverse effectively ignores the problem.

Young Smith went on to add that “there can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.”

And then:

The issue, Young Smith explains, “is representation and mix.” She is keen to work to bring all voices into the room that “can contribute to the outcome of any situation.”

Over the past several decades, changes in the law and shifts in public opinion have made concepts like affirmative action—or other initiatives that proactively seek to correct demographic imbalances in a workforce or student body—politically unpalatable. Many companies and schools have sensibly responded by recasting the problem as one of "diversity," a squishier, more inclusive-sounding term that is less likely to trigger immediate protestations of "reverse discrimination" from outraged white dudes like James Damore, who suddenly feel as if they're being treated unfairly through no fault of their own. (They rarely see the irony here.)

People are different from one another, and inviting more voices into the room is almost always better than having fewer. This diversity problem, though, is a simple and specific one: Discrete groups that have been subjected to invidious discrimination are underrepresented in Silicon Valley today, and tech companies' efforts to fix this alarming trend have been, thus far, woefully ineffective. By Smith's definition of diversity, Apple wouldn't actually have to do anything more in order to make progress, since anyone it hires will necessarily bring a new set of perspectives to the table.

Perhaps Smith's musings here and initiatives she might spearhead to recruit more women and minority employees aren't mutually exclusive. But if diversity is treated as encompassing everything, then it no longer means anything.